Jack Rhodes leads his payroll detail back from Reno, Nevada to the small town of Susanville, California. The time is 1864. The Civil War in the East is as bloody as ever. The detail is nearly wiped out as they near the town of Janesville. Jack Rhodes is the only one left and the killers take him and the gold leaving the bodies of the fallen where they lay. Five years later Jack Rhodes' mother Belle Jean Rhodes hires Peter Dawes to find out what happened to her son and clear her name in the process.